Thank you all for your comments here, your emails, your phone calls, your kind words, your thoughts and your prayers. Life does go on and though Wednesday’s news wasn’t what Bob and I were hoping to hear, we are still optimistic and are doing our best to move on. I got my period today and thus will go in on Monday for my cycle day 3 blood work and ultrasound. I spoke with one of the nurses yesterday and she answered a few outstanding questions I had. She also said that it was hard for her to call me on Wednesday because she and the other nurses/staff there apparently think I am very nice and she said that always makes it harder for them to make those calls to patients who they feel a real connection with. I assured her that she couldn’t have broken the news in a better way and that I thought she chose her words well. She also tried to reassure me there was hope by telling me about three of her patients who all had recent IVF cycles fail, but then went on to use some of their frozen embryos for Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) cycles and all three of them got pregnant!!! 🙂 So she said that it is encouraging that we have one strong embryo frozen for the future, even though we will most likely be doing another fresh cycle next! 🙂

By the end of this coming week (after our appointment on Friday with our RE) we should have a better idea of the protocol and schedule for our next cycle. In theory I should start back on the pill, for 21 days, one week from today (as my RE’s office likes to start women on the Saturday after they get their period for scheduling purposes). However, I had done the math on my calendar to figure out when everything would happen in our next cycle, if our new protocol wasn’t that different from the last cycle, and unfortunately by my estimation our ET could run very close, if not into, the week I am suppose to be accompanying Bob on his business trip to Vegas at the end of June. 🙁 So when I spoke with the nurse yesterday, and told her our predicament, she assured me that they do allow women to start earlier than Saturday sometimes and that when I came in on Monday we could discuss me starting the pill as early as Thursday to try to help there be at least a few days between my ET and our flight on Monday, June 25 for Vegas. The nurse said they think vacations are extremely important for their infertility patients and that they would try to help us work around it! 🙂

Since Wednesday I have had my ups and downs, but overall I am doing well. It took me some time to get use to not treating myself as if I was pregnant (as they strongly encourage you to do after the ET) and immediately being able to drop all of those restrictions. I kept forgetting I could now lift heavy things, including Sean, and exert myself more in other ways. The medications I had been using, to help support a potential pregnancy, didn’t leave my system right away, so I also think in many ways my body still thought I might be pregnant. Wednesday evening was especially hard for me emotionally, but by Thursday morning I woke up determined to push forward and make the most of the next few weeks before I start injections and such again! Sean and I went back to our neighborhood exercise place Thursday morning! It was great for both Sean and me to see our friends there! It was painful to tell those who knew we were trying IVF that our first cycle had not been successful, but it was also comforting to have their support and to be able to enjoy a great work out with them!

Later that morning Sean and I went to the library and then his art class, which he so enjoys! While he was at his art class I went to Starbucks with a friend (who’s son is also in the class with Sean) and sat outside enjoying a hot cocoa and chatting. My friend actually didn’t know about our doing IVF and I chose not to tell her about it at that time, but it was refreshing to just have a normal conversation that didn’t have to do with what I had been through the past two months or the news I had received the day before. That afternoon I did some cleaning and organizing around the house and tried making a yummy new Tastefully Simple chicken breast recipe for dinner, which Bob and I both really enjoyed! I just felt good do some more “normal” activities in my life with Bob and Sean!

Yesterday (Friday) morning Sean and I drove up and met my Dad at the Kohl Children’s Museum in Glenview, where we recently became members. The three of us had a fabulous time there and my Dad and I were amazed at Sean’s attention span with each of the play areas there! We stayed from a little after 9:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. (including a yummy lunch at the “Kim & Scott’s Gourmet Pretzel Twisting Cafe” there)! After my Mom got home from school yesterday afternoon, Sean and I had fun playing with her. Sean went to sleep at my parent’s house last night while Bob and I met some friends at a tasty Italian restaurant on the north side of Chicago called “Sabatino’s!” The food and the service were awesome and it was great to have a fun and relaxing evening with friends. One of the few upsides of not being pregnant at dinner last night was getting to enjoy some good wine that one of our friends, who knows a lot about different kinds of wine, ordered for our table. Similar to my Starbuck’s date with my friend on Thursday afternoon, most of our friends at dinner last night didn’t know about our doing IVF and we didn’t tell them. Though at times it was wierd to make conversation, pretending nothing big had happened in our lives in the past week, it was also nice to sort of forget about it all for a little while and just have a good night out with them!

Anyway, today we are continuing to take advantage of my renewed ability to help get things done around the house! Tonight we look forward to hopefully cheering the Bulls onto a victory in Game 1, of the second round, of the NBA playoffs! Tomorrow we look forward to celebrating with my mom at a retirement party for her hosted by some of her school coworkers! I am so excited for her to join my dad in retirement next month, as it means that she will have a lot more free time to do with as she chooses and we will get to spend a lot more time with her! All of these events and activities we have and will be doing soon, though earlier this week I imagined participating in knowing we were expecting, are all reminding me of all that I have to be grateful for in my life and are also a lot of fun!

I will keep you posted about how my appointments at the RE’s office go this week. Thank you again for your continued support, thoughts and prayers, especially during this time since we found out that our 1st IVF cycle was not successful! Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on…

P.S. Please say a prayer for a friend of mine who had her 1st IVF ER yesterday. I just heard from her that she got her fertilization report and it didn’t go as they had hoped it would. Though I won’t get into the details, it looks like they will not be able to go on with this cycle and she will have to start a new one. IVF, when it works, seems like it can be so amazing, but when it doesn’t it can be so disappointing. I still believe that it can and will work for both me and my friend in time and I appreciate you keeping my friend and her family in your prayers.